WHY DO WE NO LONGER READ NEWSPAPERS?

For several years, there is a very serious issue affecting publishers and communication consultants around the world.

An endangered species

The fact is so alarming that some international top newspapers such as The New York Times, Herald Tribune or The Boston Globe have been purchased at a bargain price. Their value is just a sixth of what they used to cost five years ago, because they no longer have readers.

The harsh reality of the increasing loss in the newspapers’ accounts, also in Spain, has set the alarm with the balance from the two first months of 2015. In this period, top newspapers in Spain such as El País have reduced in 47.000 their copies. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis 11.250 journalists have disappeared from the 16.000 existing in 2008, and there are just 4.750 professionals in the Spanish editorial offices.

Copywriters are in danger of extinction because we no longer read newspapers; many of them are free and given in the train to maintain the readership. And when we expect things couldn’t get worse, the number of readers’ losses that during the last 6 years has been of double-digit continues to increase.

As with other professions, the problem lies in the trivialization of the journalistic activity. A publicist colleague that quitted the profession a few years ago due to the generalization of the low cost advertisement affirms that everybody gives its opinion on advertisement and medicine. And the same happens with journalism.

The low cost is part of our life: when we process a plane ticket, when we buy furniture, when we go to the supermarket and also when we want to read a newspaper. All the publishing groups’ efforts to stop the decreasing number of print readers and their intents to earn from online contents were in vain. Actually the problem is the publishers’ late modernization and, above all, the lack of a common agreement.

Furthermore, Google considers the possibility of removing medical information from its searching pages in order to avoid the patients’ overload of information when they visit the doctor. Sometimes they prefer to follow Google’s advice instead of the one provided by the physician. That’s already a reality in our country, but it is not definitely Google’s fault.